Geovany Soto: Not a Swinger

I swear, this almost never happens.

Geovany Soto has been eating less; that was the real addition by subtraction we heard about all spring. He shed a few pounds (and a few eyebrow hairs) and gained a bit of his old agility and go-get-'em motivation. He added some mobility behind the plate by subtracting the munchies. Hooray for that, but burning through Cheetos isn't the only thing Geo stopped doing.

If it seems like Soto has had his bat on his shoulder an awful lot this season, your eyes aren't deceiving you. He's always been a pretty patient hitter, but so far this season, Geovany Soto is swinging even less than normal.

In fact, he's swinging less than anyone.

Of all Major League Baseball players with at least 30 plate appearances, Geo's 27.5% swing percentage is the lowest. He sees 4.2 pitches per plate appearance, so I guess that means he swings about once every trip to the plate. I'm sure Vince Vaughn would want to give Geo a grand speech about using his great big bear claws to rip apart helpless bunny-rabbit fastballs, but I'm just fine with Soto's wait-and-see approach.

His OBP is .527 thanks in no small part to his 14 walks. But when Geo does swing, he does some pretty serious damage, to the tune of a .537 slugging percentage. A 1.064 OPS isn't too shabby. So why aren't more people raving about Geo's ridiculously good, too-hot-to-maintain start?

Well, maybe because he's buried at the bottom of the order. Maybe because the Soto-take-a-pitch drinking game has effectively erased Cubs fans' memories of all Geovany's at-bats. Maybe because Lou pinch hits for him when he wants to give away outs late in the game. I don't know. I guess I don't care. I just want more of this getting on base/crushing the ball when he does decide to swing business.

And the winning. The winning is nice.